Chapter Text
When Lan Wangji came to the magistrate’s estate in Lufeng, he found the aged manor house in a state of neglect.
This was not to say that the manor had been neglected, exactly. It was staffed by a fleet of dutiful servants who had maintained the house and gardens without fault in the old magistrate’s absence; but somehow, Lan Wangji felt as if the estate’s previous owners had not cared for it.
Privately, Lan Wangji thought it would hardly be a wonder if that were so. Yunmeng County was no longer what it used to be; for its farms were small, owned directly by the families that lived on them, and few people within its borders could truly be called wealthy. Those few spent much of their time in neighboring Anlu and Hanchuan, as far from the sleepy rivers of Yunmeng as could be: and with no diversions for rich men to be had within a day’s travel from the magistrate’s seat, an appointment in Yunmeng had long been considered something of a punishment in the capital.
We grant Lan Wangji a fifteen years’ appointment at the magistrate’s office in Lufeng, read the imperial decree bestowed to Lan Wangji last month. In this way, the Second Young Master Lan can serve the people in peace, in accordance with his temperament.
This did not come as a surprise, for Lan Wangji’s appointment—which he did not consider a punishment, in spite of the circumstances—had been granted in retribution for his elder brother’s marriage to Nie Mingjue.
The way it began was this: the Emperor had decided to find Nie-jiangjun a wife from the empress dowager’s clan earlier that year, in the wake of General Nie’s latest victory in the west. He had long been wary of the Nie clan’s military exploits, and warier still of the admiration Nie Mingjue and his retired father received throughout the empire; but where another monarch might have stripped General Nie of his power outright, the emperor resolved to bind him to the imperial family by betrothing him to the empress dowager’s niece.
But Nie Mingjue had no intention of marrying the emperor’s biaomei ; and when he returned to Youzhou and learned that the taihou’s family was preparing for a wedding, he came to the Lan-fu and took Lan Xichen as his nanqi before the emperor could announce the marriage decree.
Though the Emperor was nearly incandescent with rage, there was little he could do in the way of punishing Nie Mingjue. Nie-jiangjun had effectively cut off his own lineage by taking a man as his zheng spouse, and made himself a laughingstock in the eyes of the empire besides: so he was allowed to depart the capital and return to his post with his husband, and Lan Wangji—as the di brother of the official who had supplanted Nie Mingjue’s intended wife—was sent to Yunmeng County and ordered to remain there for the next fifteen years, in spite of the fact that county magistrates were rarely allowed to maintain the same appointment for more than three.
“The emperor is using you to vent his frustration,” Lan Qiren had sighed, when Lan Wangji was given a magistrate’s posting instead of an office in the Ministry of Works. “His pride must have been injured by your brother’s marriage. But Nie-jiangjun is out of his reach, and Xichen is a nanqi and cannot be touched—so he has decided to make an example of you instead.”
“I understand. And it is true that I would rather have taken over Brother’s posting, but this appointment will be no hardship to me,” Lan Wangji assured him. “I will miss home, of course: but you and Xiongzhang hold no official positions, so you can visit me in Yunmeng whenever you please.”
Lan Qiren nodded in approval. “Good,” he said. “But for heaven’s sake, Wangji—at least try to look disappointed when you receive the assignment, won’t you? If his Majesty finds out that you have no complaints about the Yunmeng posting, he’ll do far worse than send you off to the countryside for fifteen years—mark my words.”
So Lan Wangji accepted the decree, kneeling before the emperor with an appropriately downcast mien as he received it: and after he journeyed southeast from Youzhou to Yunmeng, he decided that his new posting suited him exceedingly well.
There was no proper yamen for the Yunmeng magistrate to work in. There was only the old living compound, whose border stones still bore the name Jiang —left behind by the estate’s first masters, who had lived there before the rise of the current dynasty—etched across their faces; and when Lan Wangji asked the attending clerks if there was a large yamen elsewhere, they pointed him to the estate’s front courtyard.
“We live in the side rooms on the east side, Lan-xianling,” said the eldest of the clerks. “To the west, there is an audience chamber where you will receive petitioners, and two offices—a private one for you, and a large one that the five of us share among ourselves. Beside the private office, there is a chamber where Lan-xianling may entertain guests on official business; and the north wing houses a storage chamber and the room of records.”
“But what of the medical examiner’s office?” Lan Wangji asked, frowning.
“The examiner’s office is half a li south of here, just beside the jail. The local physicians will serve as medical examiners when the need arises, and you may call upon the manservants assigned here if you require enforcers for the jail.”
Lan Wangji nodded and thanked the clerk—who had given his name as Ji Li, with the li for the water chestnut—before making his way to the east courtyard. There, he found a library and a family dining chamber, along with a pair of leisure rooms and a bedroom for his own use; and to the west, he found a guest courtyard with four neatly-furnished bedrooms surrounding a bamboo garden.
The north yard was the largest of the three rear courts, meant to house a magistrate’s wife and children. Lan Wangji would not use these rooms himself, for he had no plans to marry during his appointment; but if the staff and servants were willing, they might as well leave their cramped rooms in the south courtyard and live in the women’s court.
It was a handsome courtyard, whose garden boasted a pair of reading pavilions and a shallow pond filled with lotus pods. Lan Wangji visited it after luncheon on his second day at the estate, noting approvingly that two or three of the clerks might be able to bring their families there: and as he crossed the bridge between the two pavilions, he spotted a side-door facing the strip of garden between the mistress’s bedroom and the estate’s perimeter wall.
Curious, Lan Wangji slipped through it and found himself standing on a narrow path leading to a barred gate in the north wall. This he unlocked with the key-ring Ji Li gave him when he first arrived: and as he crossed the threshold, he felt the breath fly from his body at the sight before him.
Before he left Youzhou, Lan Wangji had been informed that a tributary of the Huangbai flowed through Lufeng, and that one of the tributary’s offshoots was near his future home. But he had not expected to find the stream less than ten zhang from his back gate—and nor had he known that the east and west walls extended for fifteen feet past the joint where they met the north wall, half-enclosing a flower garden that spilled forth from the manor to the bank of the stream.
At once, Lan Wangji noted that whoever had built the garden must have done so with the intention that it should bloom year-round. From where he stood, Lan Wangji saw winter-blooming camellias and a plum-blossom tree, and yinghua and an ancient magnolia that would flower in the spring; and for summer, there were hibiscus and a bevy of wild roses, followed by chrysanthemum and osmanthus for the autumn.
How odd, Lan Wangji thought, glimpsing a row of fruit trees growing near the east wall. After all, this garden was so out of the way that the previous magistrate must not have visited it very often: so why had so many fruit trees been planted here, when there were none in the main residence save the lone peach tree in the magistrate’s courtyard?
Lan Wangji would have put this question to the staff: but the garden was old, and its trees uncommonly long-lived, so he doubted that Ji Li and the others would know anything about its origins.
He turned and started back towards the house, and then he stopped and glanced back at the burbling stream. There was a flat rock a few feet from the bank, beside another border-stone marked with the name Wei: and as the wind skimming the water struck the two together, it almost seemed as if a whisper of laughter had echoed from the depths of the stream.
Unbidden, the corners of Lan Wangji’s mouth rose in a smile.
“Farewell,” he said aloud; and with that, he retraced his steps to the gate and barred the doors behind him.
* * *
Though he had resolved to visit the back garden often, Lan Wangji did not return to it for the next fortnight. There was no end to his duties in his first week as Yunmeng’s magistrate: and once he had met with the townspeople who came to offer their greetings to him, Lan Wangji spent his mornings hearing petitions and his afternoons attending to the tasks the previous magistrate had left unfinished.
On his ninth day at the manor, he summoned his clerks and asked if any of them were willing to move to the rear courtyard. Ji Li refused, as did the two unmarried junior clerks: but the last two had families of their own, who lived so far from the magistrate’s manor that it was impossible for the clerks to see their wives and children more than twice a month.
“You might as well bring them to live in the rear courtyard,” Lan Wangji told them. “Han Qi has only one child, and Yu Zhiting has two. The rear courtyard is large, so there should be room enough for all of you.”
Han Qi stared at him in astonishment.
“This one is truly grateful for Lan-xianling’s kindness,” he stammered. “It would be a great thing for my family, to be sure—but you are young, and will surely take a wife long before your appointment is over. What would the future Lan-furen think if she came here to find a clerk’s family living in her quarters?”
Lan Wangji shook his head. “I have no plans to marry before I return to Youzhou. And even if I wished to, there would be little chance of my finding an appropriate match,” he said. “Do you know why I was sent to Yunmeng, Han-gongzi?”
“This one dares not presume, Lan-xianling. But Yu-ge and I did wonder; for we heard that last year’s tanhua came from the Lan family—and we are dearly fond of Lufeng, but in the capital…”
“It is just as you think. His Majesty intended to reprimand my family for thwarting a betrothal he arranged,” Lan Wangji replied. “He wanted to set up an engagement between the current heir to the Nie clan and one of the empress dowager’s nieces; but Nie-jiangjun married my elder brother as a nanqi before the wedding could take place, and I was sent to Yunmeng as a way of bearing punishment in my brother’s stead.
“And regarding the matter of my marriage—the Lan clan lost a whole lifetime’s worth of face after my xiongzhang married Nie-jiangjun. No woman of rank would be willing to cross my threshold as a bride now.”
Han Qi and Yu Zhiting exchanged troubled glances.
“I understand,” Yu Zhiting said at last. “My family and I are in your debt, Lan-xianling.”
The two men bowed and departed, taking the junior clerks with them. Ji Li lingered in the doorway for a moment, observing Lan Wangji from beneath his hooded brows: and then he too saluted and left the room, closing the door softly in his wake.
For some reason, Ji Li’s gaze seemed to follow Lan Wangji about the manor after that night. When he was working in the clerks’ shared study—which he elected to do for at least a shichen each day, since he found it wearisome to keep summoning them to his own—he often glanced up and saw Ji Li watching him; and when he made his way to the room of records to examine some file or other, he heard the familiar halting sound of Ji Li’s footsteps at the other end of the chamber.
Something about Lan Wangji must have caught the old man’s interest, though Lan Wangji could not fathom what: and on the two-week anniversary of his arrival at the yamen, Ji Li knocked at the door to Lan Wangji’s study just after xushi.
“My lord,” he said, after Lan Wangji called him in and showed him to a chair. “I have come to beg a boon from you.”
Lan Wangji looked at him in surprise. “Has it anything to do with Han Qi and Zhiting’s matter?”
“No. No,” Ji Li said, before drawing a deep breath. “It was very good of you to think of their families, my lord, but as I said then—I am a widower, and my daughter has been married away from Lufeng these last twenty years. My rooms in the clerks’ dormitory are more than sufficient for me.”
“Then what is it?”
“Does Lan-xianling remember the garden behind the north gate?” asked Ji Li. “And the two stones by the osmanthus tree at the bank of the stream?”
“En, I do. What about them?”
“That stream—or rather, the section that flows behind the yamen—is the body of Yunmeng’s river god. The garden is the river god’s chief shrine: and until shortly before I was born, the Lufeng magistrates were his chief worshippers,” Ji Li said somberly. “In my father’s time, the magistrates brought offerings to the shrine each morning to pray for good harvests and prosperity for the people. The prayers kept us safe, and warded off famine—and for many years, it was common for disasters that devastated Hanchuan and Anlu to touch us not at all.
“But whatever the reason, rich men never had much luck in Yunmeng. They could never expand their estates, since their neighbors were unwilling to sell land to them; and if they tried to take the land they wanted by force—or even women, on occasion—they fell into poverty due to some mishap or other, and fled the county as soon as they were able. The new magistrate who came in the year I was born was a rich man himself, who was made to take a posting here against his wishes: and when he heard that only the common folk could live as they pleased in Yunmeng, he decided not to pray to the river god, lest Lao Huangbai keep him from ruling over us as he sought to do.
“He refused to visit the shrine, and forbade my father from tending to it on his behalf; and though he only remained at our yamen for three years, the magistrates that succeeded him were much the same. In my lifetime, no one has worshipped the river god here save in the magistrate’s absence.”
Here, Ji Li fell silent and looked at Lan Wangji.
“I dared not think that matters would be different under you, Lan-xianling—especially after I learned that you had been last year’s tanhua. But after what you have done for Han-di and Yu Zhiting, I hoped…”
Lan Wangji inclined his head. “En, I understand.”
“I meant no offense, my lord.”
“None was taken,” Lan Wangji assured him. “Then the boon you wished to ask of me—is it that I should pay my respects to your river god, as the first magistrates did?”
“Yes, Lan-xianling,” said Ji Li, visibly relieved. “But if you would rather not, giving us leave to worship him at the estate would be more than enough.”
“You and the rest of the staff are free to visit the shrine as you please,” Lan Wangji replied. “I will visit in the mornings, for I get up early; and when I am too busy to go, you may bring offerings to the garden on my behalf.”
Ji Li bowed to him thrice, bending so low that Lan Wangji rushed to catch him by the elbows out of fear he would fall into a full kowtow: and, with a flushed face and bright eyes, he thanked Lan Wangji and turned to leave.
“Wait,” Lan Wangji called, as Ji Li stepped out into the hall. “Ji-gongzi—one moment.”
Obediently, Ji Li closed the door and made his way back to Lan Wangji’s side. “Yes, Lan-xianling?”
“Is Yunmeng’s river god connected with the border stone in the rear garden?” Lan Wangji asked. “I know that the first masters of this estate bore the name Jiang, before it became the residence of the Yunmeng magistrates—and the border stone at the front of the manor reads ‘Jiang,’ but the one in the shrine garden…”
Ji Li nodded. “Lan-xianling means the stone that reads ‘Wei?’”
“En—that very one.”
“Lan-xianling is correct,” Ji Li said. “The river god’s name is Wei Wuxian: and he was once a man of Yunmeng. He was raised in this very house, over three hundred years ago; and when he died, he was laid to rest on its grounds.”
And then, as he saw the astonishment in Lan Wangji’s eyes: “Would you like to hear the tale, my lord?”
“If Ji-gongzi would be so kind as to tell me, then certainly.”
So Ji Li seated himself before the magistrate’s desk, bowing his head when Lan Wangji asked whether he would stay to supper: and after the meal was finished, and the dishes cleared away, Ji Li began to speak.